A Time out of Mind
by Raynidreams
Summary: Galactica's last jump seen through Sam.


**Title: A Time out of Mind**  
**Rating: K**  
**Summary: The last jump of _Galactica_**  
**Characters: Sam's POV on Kara et. al.**

* * *

Pain, agony. Seared connections.

"_We've got to get outta here."_

The workings of _Galactica_ issued forth from between his pale lips. Thrusters, numbers, avionics, pressure: mechanical parts of the ship held together by the living tissue now spread throughout her structure.

"_Starbuck, Jump the ship!"_

The ship was in his head - _was his head - _and he was aware of himself by only the merest thread of cognitive recognition now. Everything else was ashes. Ashes and machine.

"_I don't have the rendezvous co-ordinates!"_

Like a stargazer finding the constellations, he wove around a pattern of points, forming shapes and networks. He channelled paths, working as the fulcrum for an unbalanced load.

Impact. Collisions and more damage.

A load about to fall.

"_It doesn't matter. Just jump us outta here. Jump!"_

The order was given and he heard it, but was not able to perform the function. Not without the correct directive. Sound did not constitute a command. _Not any more._ Broken, he needed more than that to obey.

So the machine stayed still and he waited.

All along his sides the fires were burning. The explosions cutting through him and the ship, storming from the outside in, and then from the inside out as the invading machines and defending humans fought within the charred walls.

Pause...

Command waiting...

Systems running:

Gun battery on intermittent.

A section of cable hatching has been breached.

Air pressure lost.

Oxygen levels down.

The flight pods are not able to be retracted.

All is shattered.

Pause... data needed...

"_There must be some way out of here."_

The co-ordinates were entered slowly at first and then more rapidly. The information quickening as it fed from there, the figures travelling through the system into his brain. He translated them into a place. A fixed point in the universe.

_1123 6536 5321_

Pause... _the beating of a heart_... the switching over of binary code.

The key was grasped and entered by a blood and dirt marred hand; the fingers spaced over its blue glow like an occultation of a dying sun.

'_JUMP!'_

Nothing and no one would ever come to this spot after them now, for the empty sun would just eat and eat at this place for all eternity. _Starving_, it would pull on all light that passed in its way.

He registered this.

He calculated force, dark-matter, fact and possibilities.

He could see both the here and the then.

Light surrounded them all and the ship vanished from this dark spot in the universe.

This was the beginning of the end.

The passage paused all other distractions.

Nowhere and everywhere. The in-between. The frenzy of one breath... the ship's systems: it all fell away.

_The song. The one from the past. The future. All their futures. All times._

He could hear it again, just as he had before, when it had showed him what he was. _Who he was inside._

The confusion cleared and parts previously linked by natural mental routes reworked themselves round the damaged connections, forging paths through wires, vessels and matter that had in times past performed other functions.

Inside of it, he snatched at the glimpses of reality, the splices of fragile emotion and moments of fragmented memory. Understanding snaked through his broken body.

The jump gave him freedom. It made him whole.

But the numbers were so distant. The destination was so far away, so far beyond the red line that _Galactica_ shuddered in his embrace. He struggled to hold everything together, to complete the journey registered by her hand.

_Angles and curves. The perfect face. The perfect place._

Struggling past digits and programming, he fought to bring the human part of himself to the surface and screamed. It was soundless. No air moved in the jump. The living vibrations of his full throated cry for help were quashed.

In desperation, he searched for them. Needing to see them.

By the side of his prison, two of the others were still standing. On the floor was the third, the elegant curve of her neck shattered by the hands of the fourth.

He looked down from the balcony of the Opera House, on to the two who wore the faces of angels. Then to the leader's of the fleet. Both couples in each others arms.

He searched further. To the son, the future leader as he shone so vitally within the chaos scattered all around.

From there on to mother and father of the new race and their daughter, born of a powerful love found within a dark war.

He gazed at them all as they stood frozen within the acceleration of light. Fixed like the few statues he pictured still standing on the broken landscape of the gardens of Caprica.

The Lords of Kobol.

Deities with the crafted expressions and fixed sublime lines of marble sculptures.

Only one of them was not frozen. Not completely. Her eyes worked, blankly flicking from side to side, witnessing a rush. The rapture.

Then the timelessness of the jump opened up his vision and he connected with her.

"_Just trust yourself."_

He became witness to the rush of images that had slammed through her head in those final moments. The woven tapestry of her past leading her to that single beat in time. A time out of mind.

For the first time in weeks, he truly saw his wife.

She was braced against the tiered block of the drive with her head raised. The key glowing beneath her hand. Frozen sparks trapped in space lit her hair from behind and shone off the blood on her arms and face.

She was with them, and not with them.

"_I can't get no relief."_

The once hidden knowledge was exposed on her face.

It hurt to look at her like this. He closed his eyes.

"_I'll see you on the other side"._

Whispering the words, he repeats her dying call back to her. He could sense the fire that had seared her skin and knew that it was coming for him, reaching out to welcome him with open arms. Soon, both he and the ship would know that searing touch.

"_All this has happened before"._

He knew this too. It was burnt into his soul. In to hers. All of them were branded by the mistakes of the past.

"_And all of it will happen again."_

The fire brought life and took it away in an ever repeating pattern. Circular and revolving. A twisting road to end up in the same place.

"_And again."_

His silent scream was severed and the ship groaned for him as they arrived.

"_And again."_

He heard the Admiral.

He heard the others.

He was listening for her.

"_Where have you taken us, Kara?"_, Pythia's leader asked slowly and carefully.

Sam waited for her to respond, his voice muted by the ship again running through his head.

But there was only silence.

Then fire.

Death and then freedom once more.


End file.
